In
Indonesia, the construction of the house symbolizes the division
of the macrocosm into three regions: the upper world, the seat of
deities and ancestors. The typical way of buildings in Southeast
Asia is to build on stilts, an architectural form usually
combined with a saddle roof. Another characteristic of Southeast
Asian houses is the forked horn on the roof, which is considered
to be a symbol of the buffalo, regarded throughout the region as
a link between Heaven and this world. The most famous stilt
houses of Indonesia are those of the Dayak in Borneo, the Minangkabau and Batak on Sumatra, and the Toraja on Sulawesi.

The
Long Houses of the Dayak:

The
Dayak, some of the original inhabitants of Borneo, build long
houses on stilts, using ironwood for the structure and tree bark
for the walls; the floor are simple planks of wood placed side by
side. The length of these houses was for the last century of 110
meters (over 360 feet) and today they generally range from 10 to
70 meters (33 to 230 feet).

On Borneo the long house forms a
center for both social life and for rituals. Here people
meet to talk after work, and its here the central
ceremonies and rituals of the group are performed.

In each
long house is a central stilt or main post which is the
first to be placed in position when the house is built.
This post is associated with the ancestor who founded the
house has a sacred signifiance; it stands in the center
of the house and its looked on as the link between the
underworld and the upper world. The long houses were
often decorated with representations of water snakes and
rhinoceros birds. They were connected with the group's
central creation myth, for water snake is associated with
the underworld and the rhinoceros bird with the upper
world of the good spirits.

Long
House - before 1920, Tumbang
Malahui, Central Borneo.

The
Houses of the Minangkabau:

The
Minangkabau are the Malaysian people who lives in the Padang
highlands of Sumatra (west of Sumatra). Typical of the houses of
the Minangkabau are the distinctive roofs, which look like
buffalo horns. The word "Minangkabau" can actually be
interpreted as a compound of the words menang (win) and kerbau
(buffalo). This derives from a local legends that people relates
that a buffalo fight was arranged by the locals and the people of
the influential kingdom of Majapahit (eastern
Java). The loacls'buffalo was the winner and since that time they
have called themselves the "buffalo winners",
Minangkabau, as a proud testament to their strength and courage.
The houses are called rumah gadang (large house) and are
not inhabited by differents families, but by three or four
generations who come from one ancestor and thus a rumah
gadang is also a family unit, and each of the Minangkabau
identifies completely with his or her own rumah gadang.

The rumah gadang has
three main areas: immediately after the entrance comes a
middle ares (rumah tongah), where there is
normally a central post; adjoining this the anjuang,
and the bedrooms (biliak). Opposite the anjuang
is the kitchen and in front of that a large space (pangkalan),
where visitors are received. While the long house is a
meeting place for all, the rumah gadang is
essentially a women's area; none of the men spends much
time in the house with his mother or his wife, and the
biliak (bedrooms) are seen as room of the house
reflects a woman's life cycle, and forms a journey from
the central post to the anjuang, then the biliak,
and lastly to the kitchen.

The
Batak, who live in north Sumatra, are divided into six ethnic
groups. Two Bataks races, the Mandailing and the Angkola Batak,
became Muslim in the middle of the 19th century, and Toba Batak
were converted to Christianity in 1864 by the German Rheinisch
Missionary Society. The others kept their native religion, though
there have been converts to Islam and Christianity more recently.

"The houses of the Toba and
Karo are recognizable by their massive style of building
construction, which is suited to the way the inhabitants
settled more and less permanently. The stilt house is an
eminently pratical form of architecture for life in the
tropics. Unfortunately, the Toba Batak houses are no
longer being built. Earlier, rice stores (sopo)
were a part of the traditional house, the rumah adat.
The sopo were very important as status symbols.

The
ornaments put onto the external walls of the house are
meant to drive away evil influences. These ornaments
consist of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic
representations, carved decorative ornaments, and wall
paintings. The colors used are natural colors, the most
iportant being red (from red clay), white (from chalk),
and black (from charcoal), which respectively represent
the three spheres of the cosmos: the human world, the
world of good spirits above, and the underworld.

The
ethnic groups in the mountain regions of southwest and central
Sulawesi (Celebes) are known by the name of Toraja, which has
come to mean "those who live upstream" or "those
who live in the mountains". Their name is in fact derived
from Raja, which in Sanskrit means "king". The
society is hierarchically structured: the noblemen are called
rengnge, the ordinary people to makaka, and the
slaves to kaunan; birth determines which rank a person
will occupy.

The distinctive features of the
traditional houses (tongkonan) of the Toraja are
the "buffalo horns", the roof design and the
rich decoration on the walls. The buffalo is a symbol of
status, courage, strength and fighting spirit.

Designed
as a representation of the universe, the tongkonan
is constructed in three parts: the upper world (the
roof), the world of humans (the middle of the building),
and the underworld (the space under the floor). The
highly distinctive roofs constructed by the Toraja have
given rise to various ingenious interpretations.
Certainly the roof is something of deep significance for
the Toraja, and even today they build "modern"
(in other words houses built with cement) houses with
such roofs.